Flipping the Experts

There are three things i care about: - the right to privacy - freedom - the environment.   Our Celebrity Scientists hijacked the last one to get people to give up the first two.  I’ve got a great craw - but that was never gonna make it all the way down.

Here’s the argument oft repeated by the Zoonati (espoused here by Virus Hunter (Lipkin)):

32:30 I think that we’re seeing this (virus outbreaks) much more than we used to and this is the function of many things - deforestation - population migration - international travel - climate change.

Apart from climate change - all of those have been going on since the Stone Age. (edit: actually, including climate change)
Ok, I’ve got a theory - if you flip the script with Lipkin/Daszak-speak - you end up a lot loser to the truth.  In the spirit of scientific experimentation, let's give it a spin:

32:30 I think that we’re seeing this (virus outbreaks) much more than we used to and this is the function of many things - scientists collecting viruses - scientists meddling with viruses - scientists having accidents with viruses.

Why do I think things could get worse?  If we don’t change the ways in which we interact with our natural environment, we’re going to have this problem continuously.

Why do I think things could get worse? If we don’t change the ways in which scientists interact with our natural environment, we’re going to have this problem continuously.

We have international trade which means that something that starts in central Africa rapidly spreads around the world - just like this did, right?  (Ian, memo-to-self, Covid didn’t start in central Africa, right? How about this:)

We have international trade which means that something that starts in Wuhan rapidly spreads around the world - just like this did, right?

We have people who can no longer 34:16 find protein so they wind up eating wild animals and becoming infected by those animals.

We have scientists who can no longer 34:16 find funding from bio-terrorism fear-mongering, so they wind up trapping wild animals and becoming infected by those animals.

We have very wealthy people who like to keep exotic pets, which can infect animals as well - so we are a perfect storm for this - we need to change the way we interact with our natural environment. 34:39

We have very wealthy scientists who like to experiment on exotic lab animals, which can infect lab workers as well - so we are a perfect storm for this - we need to change the way scientists interact with our natural environment. 34:39

Cool!  Wish i'd discovered this technique earlier - could've saved a lot of time spent on constructing detailed, referenced arguments to counter Zoonati drivel.